Posts

"I am Groot!" shouts the big tree
looking dude. Guardians of the Galaxy is a semi-recent instant cult classic
that I was fortunate enough to watch for free on a recent flight from Phoenix
to San Francisco (don't call it frisco). Watching movies on a flight is taken
for granted these days just like getting a “taxi” to your hotel using an app or
sliding your hotel card “key”, technology is enabling the world to travel
seamlessly while away from home. Let’s take a closer look at some of the ways
data centers truly impact the tourism industry. Before leaving on a trip, even a last minute one,
there’s a fair bit of planning that goes into it. Outside of the normal “what
clothes am I going to bring” or “do I have the right size toothpaste to get
through security” questions, are things like “what should we see when we get
there” and “where’s the best places to eat”. Now, you might say that all of
those questions are a simple click away on my phone or computer but those
devices a…

The Infinity Paradigm Standards Framework from the International Data Center Authority (IDC-A.org) is the latest and I believe most complete standards set for IT. Many of us have participated in efforts to create a method to measure the value, effectiveness and efficiency of our IT infrastructure but I believe this to be the most complete by far. Early efforts to improve infrastructure efficiency came from The Green Grid with PUE, followed by WUE, the Data Center Sustainability Metric and the Data Center Maturity Model. There have been other efforts to improve communication and resiliency like the Data Center Pulse “Data Center Stack” and most recently Infrastructure Masons released their data center rating system. The aforementioned efforts helped to put focus on and provide measures and metrics needed for improved management and ownership of critical and costly IT infrastructure. In the case of the Infinity Paradigm perhaps the most important factor is the notion of treating your en…

We are in an exciting time. It is not every day that you get to be on the forefront of a fledgling industry as it is being built brick-by-brick into what will most likely become the industry that dominates the 21st century. As was the case a century ago with the automotive industry, which dominated the landscape of economic growth and development for many countries worldwide, the data center industry was born of major advancements in technology and is poised to rule the economic landscape for the foreseeable future. Data Centers as an industry are in their infancy, and it has largely been up to the vendors and manufacturers to dictate what is “best” for the industry up to this point, however historically that usually only means what is best for their bottom line. We live in a “wild-west” of patchwork standards and best-practice documents that pertain to only small segments of our industry. There has yet to be a codified means of end-to-end design of a data center to be inclusive of t…

The future of IT/Data Centers is here. IDCA’s Infinity Paradigm® will be the road map that all aspects of the data center industry use. From application requirements to cloud computing, platform selection, information technology infrastructure, site facilities infrastructure, site selection, collocation and other services, capacity management, security, maintenance and operations, the Infinity Paradigm® Standards Framework enables a comprehensive and holistic view of the Application EcosystemTM that represents a visionary change in how the information technology and data center industry will do business going forward.
The Infinity Paradigm® Standards Framework for The Application Ecosystem™ gives the end user the tools that will enable them to get the most value for their CAPEX and OPEX budget dollars and the capability and agility to adapt to rapidly evolving business requirements.
As Program Manager of Data Center Operations for CHRISTUS Health, the AE360 framework will allow me to…

With over forty years in the Information Technology industry I’ve seen my fair share of change. I started working in the field back in the late seventies and started out as a data entry (keypunch) guy and worked my way into more demanding jobs with greater responsibilities wherever I worked (military or public service). The one constant in all these years has been change. Some positive - and let’s be honest - some not so positive.
So why is this important today? Approximately two years ago I was sitting in an IDCA Data Center Infrastructure Expert (DCIE®) certification class and was introduced to the Infinity Paradigm® concept. I was amazed by the concept and even more intrigued by how this concept could truly change the industry. I got involved. Today the concept has truly taken flight with the release of the Infinity Paradigm® Standards Framework. The framework is a solid foundation to provide organizations with a holistic view of their Application EcoSystemTM. It provides t…

Data Centers
are being built at an accelerating rate!
We hear unbelievable emphasis all the
time about “availability”, “how to build more availability in a single data
center site or facility?”,“N+1”, “N+2”,
“2N”, and “2N+1” guidelines all relevant to site and facilities infrastructure.But are we correctly addressing the issue of availability?Are we defining availability correctly?What are we trying to achieve via so much
emphasis on such narrow and incomplete aspects of a bigger picture?Are the notions of resilience and
availability truly all that matter?
Every time I meet fellow
colleagues, businessmen, engineers or technicians, the discussion centers around
the benefits of cloud computing, yet the legacy standards don’t fully capture
its efficacies and fail to integrate them into a meaningful bigger
picture.
We still see data center facilities
being certified as 99.995% or 99.982% available by legacy certification bodies,
and those metrics are good to know. But is it sufficient to…